Ive got it on good faith that some of the teachers get paid well (one in particular has been there since the part/full time changeover so he does quite well for himself), and even the other staff gets paid decently all things considered). I think my track's tuition (the most expensive of all the classes) is $17.5K. At least the credits I receive can transfer to other schools, such as Univ. Phoenix Online (another school Ive heard good and bad about) and others, so it isnt all bad. It is just what I feel to be the overall misinterpretation. My friend who is actualy the site tech @ Chubb, who even attended classes at the Villa Park campus, said that had I been there when he went, the experience overall would have been much better (about 3-4 years ago). Oh well...regardless, Im just going to keep on kicking ass and helping myself become the most marketable person I can be.
The tests are claimed on the front-page to be closed-book, but the majority of the time are given as open-book. They are of the format of 40-odd questions, with about 20 multiple choice, 20 fill-in-the-blank/short answer, and 5 short essay.
Well, Im currently over halfway done with the Multimedia Design 10-month course @ Chubb in downtown Chicago, and lemme tell ya, it's not what it was cracked up to be. Being a 10-year veteran of the IT indutry in the admin/HD supervisor areas, plus having my own business for a few years, Id found that the IT picture was pretty frigging crappy, and I decided it was time for achnage, expand my horizons/skills, etc. Some of the things wrong @ Chubb for starters:
1. They lay it on hard about how good the school is, and give you the entire rosy outlook syndrome. This is to be expected to an extent, and they DO have over 30 years of experience behind them, albeit quite a bit is more in the medical field. However, all the goodness they talk about is more talk than reality.
2. Originally, I had signed up for the course at their suburban Villa Park campus in IL which was supposed to start in late July. that was canceled due to lack of students. The rep I had then tried to push me into their Network Security course instead, which I did not wish to take. I had to fight and finally do the work on my own to find out if the downtown campus was offering the class and get my paperwork transferred there.
3. Teachers have been mostly a grab bag so far. In our first term, our IT Ethics teacher quit halfway through the course and our main instructor took over and we didnt do too much in that course from that point forward. Our second term, we had a transsexual (not that there is anything wrong with that) teaching our Technical Writing class (a subject I was very interested in) and he/she didnt "teach" the class at all. That is just the tip of the iceberg with this instructor, but I wont go further into details. Sad thing is, I learned nothing more about Tech Writing than before Id started that class.
4. They will get as many bodies into the school and hang on to them for as long as possible, no matter the grades a particular student receives, all in the name of the almighty dollar. The "entrance tests" are a freaking joke, and Ive even heard tell of ppl getting free passes on tests because they didnt feel comfortable in their success in passing them. If you fail a course, you get to "make it up" somehow the following term, or they will bump up your grade so you can pass.
5. Open book tests for the most part. Seriously, how are you supposed to actually gauge what has been learned if for the most part, you can just go look up the correct answer?
6. Staff/Adminstration in general. Ive heard about reps actually going to homeless shelters to sign up students. The previous school director (a truer snake oiler Ive never seen) promised everything and gave nothing. Our education director is leaving in two weeks for a better job. We've had three different financial aid people since we started in September and all but the last one really screwed students up (including myself).
7. Stupid courses. Here is the class outlay for my track: Mind you, we are also using Powerbooks for this course.
1st Term *Web Concepts *Art Concepts *IT Ethics *Comments: The concepts classes Ive no problem with. You need to start somewhere with a good foundation. The IT Ethics class was OK, but 50 hours on it? We would have been better off spending half the allotted time in Mac OSX training, instead of myself and the teacher taking care of student questions and how-tos.
2nd Term *Adobe Photoshop *Adobe Illustrator *Technical Writing *Comments: All of these were good clas choices, except for the aforementioned isue with the instructor not really teaching said class.
3rd Term *Flash *HTML/Dreamweaver *Project Management *Comments: No qualms here so far.
4th Term *Quark *Career Planning/Resume Writing *Director *Comments: As someone already mentioned, 50 hours of career planning? Give me a break!
8. Students. Given the gamut you will run in terms of knowledge/quality of the student base, you know you will be starting from a "clean slate"
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Ive got it on good faith that some of the teachers get paid well (one in particular has been there since the part/full time changeover so he does quite well for himself), and even the other staff gets paid decently all things considered). I think my track's tuition (the most expensive of all the classes) is $17.5K. At least the credits I receive can transfer to other schools, such as Univ. Phoenix Online (another school Ive heard good and bad about) and others, so it isnt all bad. It is just what I feel to be the overall misinterpretation. My friend who is actualy the site tech @ Chubb, who even attended classes at the Villa Park campus, said that had I been there when he went, the experience overall would have been much better (about 3-4 years ago). Oh well...regardless, Im just going to keep on kicking ass and helping myself become the most marketable person I can be.
The tests are claimed on the front-page to be closed-book, but the majority of the time are given as open-book. They are of the format of 40-odd questions, with about 20 multiple choice, 20 fill-in-the-blank/short answer, and 5 short essay.
Well, Im currently over halfway done with the Multimedia Design 10-month course @ Chubb in downtown Chicago, and lemme tell ya, it's not what it was cracked up to be. Being a 10-year veteran of the IT indutry in the admin/HD supervisor areas, plus having my own business for a few years, Id found that the IT picture was pretty frigging crappy, and I decided it was time for achnage, expand my horizons/skills, etc. Some of the things wrong @ Chubb for starters:
1. They lay it on hard about how good the school is, and give you the entire rosy outlook syndrome. This is to be expected to an extent, and they DO have over 30 years of experience behind them, albeit quite a bit is more in the medical field. However, all the goodness they talk about is more talk than reality.
2. Originally, I had signed up for the course at their suburban Villa Park campus in IL which was supposed to start in late July. that was canceled due to lack of students. The rep I had then tried to push me into their Network Security course instead, which I did not wish to take. I had to fight and finally do the work on my own to find out if the downtown campus was offering the class and get my paperwork transferred there.
3. Teachers have been mostly a grab bag so far. In our first term, our IT Ethics teacher quit halfway through the course and our main instructor took over and we didnt do too much in that course from that point forward. Our second term, we had a transsexual (not that there is anything wrong with that) teaching our Technical Writing class (a subject I was very interested in) and he/she didnt "teach" the class at all. That is just the tip of the iceberg with this instructor, but I wont go further into details. Sad thing is, I learned nothing more about Tech Writing than before Id started that class.
4. They will get as many bodies into the school and hang on to them for as long as possible, no matter the grades a particular student receives, all in the name of the almighty dollar. The "entrance tests" are a freaking joke, and Ive even heard tell of ppl getting free passes on tests because they didnt feel comfortable in their success in passing them. If you fail a course, you get to "make it up" somehow the following term, or they will bump up your grade so you can pass.
5. Open book tests for the most part. Seriously, how are you supposed to actually gauge what has been learned if for the most part, you can just go look up the correct answer?
6. Staff/Adminstration in general. Ive heard about reps actually going to homeless shelters to sign up students. The previous school director (a truer snake oiler Ive never seen) promised everything and gave nothing. Our education director is leaving in two weeks for a better job. We've had three different financial aid people since we started in September and all but the last one really screwed students up (including myself).
7. Stupid courses. Here is the class outlay for my track: Mind you, we are also using Powerbooks for this course.
1st Term
*Web Concepts
*Art Concepts
*IT Ethics
*Comments: The concepts classes Ive no problem with. You need to start somewhere with a good foundation. The IT Ethics class was OK, but 50 hours on it? We would have been better off spending half the allotted time in Mac OSX training, instead of myself and the teacher taking care of student questions and how-tos.
2nd Term
*Adobe Photoshop
*Adobe Illustrator
*Technical Writing
*Comments: All of these were good clas choices, except for the aforementioned isue with the instructor not really teaching said class.
3rd Term
*Flash
*HTML/Dreamweaver
*Project Management
*Comments: No qualms here so far.
4th Term
*Quark
*Career Planning/Resume Writing
*Director
*Comments: As someone already mentioned, 50 hours of career planning? Give me a break!
8. Students. Given the gamut you will run in terms of knowledge/quality of the student base, you know you will be starting from a "clean slate"